Album: Manu Chao

La Radiolina

The wonderful La Radiolina – Italian for "transistor radio" – may be the album that breaks the Gallo-Spanish star Manu Chao to a mainstream Anglo-American audience.

The singer-producer has long been successful in Europe and Latin America – his 1998 solo debut Clandestino sold five million, and he came to wider attention in 2005 for his production of Amadou & Mariam's joyous Dimanche A Bamako, but on La Radiolina he gives rein to the full range of his influences, ranging from the world/blues/rockabilly crossover of "13 Dias", with its scuttling, fast-picked guitars, and the distorted guitars, synths and sirens of the electro-rock bulldozer "Rainin' In Paradize", to the shuffling Balkan-reggae-mariachi skank of "Politik Kills", which, unusually for this anarcho-left activist, seems to dismiss the entire political realm. All three arrangements are subjected to Chao's customary recycling approach as the basis for subsequent songs – the backing track to "Rainin' In Paradize" alone recurs a further four times – which lends La Radiolina something of the air of a suite, or a soundtrack. With grooves as infectious as these, you can never hear them enough, anyway.

Download this: '13 Dias', 'Politik Kills', 'Rainin' In Paradize', A Cosa'